Ideology and Philosophy of Socialist Zionism and Labor
Zionism

The philosophical outlook of
Zionism as well as its early
practical development in Ottoman Turkish times and under the British Mandate, cannot be understood without examining the
history of Socialist and Labor Zionism. Even before the beginnings of Zionist settlement, Moses Hess, a former
friend of Karl Marx, laid the foundations for secular and socialist Zionism in his book
Rome and Jerusalem.

Zionists of the second wave of
immigration, the second Aliya, who came to Palestine between about 1903 and 1914, were greatly influenced by socialist,
anarchist and Tolstoyan ideology which abounded in their native Russia in that period.
Ber Borochov and Nachman Syrkin became disillusioned with the program of Russian socialists, and founded thePoalei Tziyon(workers of
Zion) socialist Zionist movement. Borochov synthesized Marxism and Zionism, by fitting the national struggle into
the rubric of class struggle. His famous essay, National Question and the Class Struggle maintained that the
nation was the best institution through which to conduct the class struggle. He maintained that Jews could participate
in the revolutionary movement meaningfully only through a Jewish society controlling its own economic infrastructure,
because real political power could not be gained without real economic power, based on the fundamental economic
endeavors in capitalist society. Borochov believed that it was the newly rejuvenated Jewish proletariat, and not the
elite leaders of Western Europe, who would be responsible for the Zionist revolution. He also noted the presence of
Arabs in Palestine, but believed there would be no problem in integrating Arabs in the Jewish revolution.

Nachman Syrkin, leader of the American
Poalei Tziyon, was not a Marxist. He was a voluntarist. He emphasized the importance in history
of individuals and small minorities, rather than mass movements and the inevitable operation of economic forces. He also
held a great many fashionable notions of European nationalism. He advocated socialism for moral reasons and
represented a quite different current in Poalei Tziyon from Borochov, a current that in fact became the dominant one. He
championed the ideas of building cooperative workers' settlements and the building of a "labor economy." Poalei Tziyon
and a the Zionist movement evolved a "constructivist" strategy of building Jewish Palestine by collecting funds to
finance institutions capable of organizing and settling significant numbers of immigrant workers. This would allow the
creation of a workers' economy not based on capitalist. investment. Zionism Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist utopia Zionism Israel Isreal labor Zionist movemen; middle east socialist
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Joseph Trumpeldor, who later became a hero of the Zionist right, was an
anarchist and disciple of Kropotkin. He declared, "I am an anarcho-communist and a Zionist." His program for a
syndicalist network of socialist communities, formulated in 1908-1909, was reflected in the foundation of the first
Kibbutz (commune) socialist settlements.
ael Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist utopia Zionism Israel Isreal labor Zionist movemen; middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist utopia

Labor Zionists and Socialist Zionists held diverse opinions. Some were
anarchists, some Marxists, some were probably closest to Tolstoy. Central ideas include:

Jews are socially inferior because they are landless and do not do
"productive" labor (in agriculture and basic industry).

Jewish "restoration" had to be brought about by changing the economic and
social reality of the Jewish people, because political power was rooted in the reality of economics and society.
Political solutions would be possible only when there were Jewish workers and Jewish farmers with the economic power to
influence events.

The dream of Zionism, rebuilding the Jewish national home, could only be
implemented through the agency of the Jewish working class, a working class that would be reconstructed in the land of
Israel.

Jewish life in the Diaspora (exile) could never be normal as long as Jews do
not have their own homeland.

The idea that the Jewish proletariat would bring about the Zionist revolution
was a unique contribution of Labor Zionism, and represented a revolution in the way that Jews thought about themselves.
Herzl and other founders of Zionism looked for leadership and financing from rich Jews, and for backing from foreign
potentates. In their views, the Rothschilds and the Montefiores and their friends would help to finance the transport of
the Jews, as well as providing the funds and the financing needed to influence the Kaiser and the Ottoman Sultan. But
the Kaiser and the Ottoman Sultan were indifferent. The rich Jews were quite willing to finance small scale charity
projects, but they were not enthusiastic about the project of moving all the Jews to Palestine. The Jewish national fund
could not raise funds for settlement from rich Jews, and so it devised the little charity boxes, which were placed in
every Jewish home and place of business, and made it possible for the "little people" to finance the restoration of the
Jewish people. Instead of a "restoration" from above, Labor Zionism brought about a Zionist revolution, a Jewish
homeland created by the labor of the Jewish people. This revolution was at first all encompassing, so that a large part
of the Zionist movement in Palestine was Labor Zionist. Not only the Israel Labor party, but the revisionists as well,
have their roots in Labor Zionism, since the revisionist,
Jabotinsky, was originally a socialist and a Labor Zionist.

In mainstream Jewish society, Labor Zionists and Socialist Zionists were
outsiders in all senses. In addition to being workers, they were usually Jews from Eastern Europe, rather than the elite
of Western Europe. Moreover, they were not religious Jews in the
conventional sense. They often recognized and valued the traditions embodied in the Old Testament as well as facets of
later Jewish religious philosophy, as part of the Jewish national heritage and in part, as a basis for their ideals.
However, this agnostic or atheistic respect for Jewish tradition was hardly enough to endear them to the rabbinical
establishment.

Organizational Foundation of Labor Zionism in Palestine

The Labor Zionist movement in Palestine can be said to have been born in 1905.It
was formed by the first immigrants of the Second Aliya
who were, for the most part, young socialists who fled the Tsarist police during the ferment of 1905, and especially
following the Russo-Japanese war and the failed 1905 revolution. In all, there were about 550 Jewish workers in
Palestine who might have identified themselves as such. Some of them tried to form a united organization, but they soon
split into two groups: Hapoel Hatzair with 90
members, and Poalei Tziyon
with 60 members. The former were non-Marxist socialists, followers of Nahman Syrkin and A.D. Gordon whose ideology will
be discussed below. The latter were Marxist followers of Ber Borochov, described above. In the course of its
development, the Labor Zionist movement was to unite, redivide and fragment itself many times. Fundamental issues that
divided the early movement were adherence to Marxism and primacy of national or socialist ideals. In the USSR, the
Poalei Tziyon were quickly dissolved, and many of their members were sent to Siberia or executed, weakening the Marxist
faction. In an economy where industry hardly existed, and in a land where the main dangers were anopheles mosquitoes
that carried malaria, the Turkish authorities and later the Arab marauders and the British, the issues of Marxist class
struggle hardly seemed relevant. True, working conditions were harsh, but the government was not run by the Jews and
revolution against Jewish capitalists, if there were any, was pointless. These men and women had volunteered to live in
these harsh conditions, and could not do much if they were paid poorly by the Jewish plantation owners. The latter had
to struggle to make a living themselves, and any strikes could be broken by use of Arab labor, which was generally
cheaper than Jewish labor and not amenable to organization. As the struggle between the Jewish Yishuv on the one hand,
and the Arabs, and British on the other intensified against the background of Nazi persecution in Europe, the urgent
threat to life and limb came on the front of national struggle rather than class struggle. Not surprisingly, the
national, Zionist aspects of the ideology took progressively greater precedence over the socialist aspects. Some
dissatisfied Poalei Tziyon socialists returned to the USSR, where they were eventually sent to Siberia by the Stalinist
regime.
(Laqueur, A History of Zionism, New York, Schocken, 2003, p. 277 ff).

A.D. Gordon: The Philosophy of Labor Zionism

A.D. Gordon, an early member of the Hibat Tziyon (love of Zion)
movement was an enthusiast of Tolstoyan philosophy, particularly its emphasis on the dignity of labor and the importance of
nature. Gordon came to live in Palestine, founded the Hapoel Hatzair (young worker) movement and worked at
the first Kibbutz, Degania, founded in 1909.

Beginnings of Labor Zionism in Israel: Fourth meeting of the Hapoel Hatzair movement, about 1909. David Ben
Gurion is possibly in this photo, first at the left in the second row from the bottom. If you can identify people in this photo,
please write to us.

Unlike Poalei Tziyon, Hapoel Hatzair was not Marxist and rejected the class
struggle as harmful to the Zionist cause. Gordon's philosophy, together with that of Ber Borochov, embodies the major
tenets of the strain of Zionism that created Israel and that dominated the Zionist movement and Israeli politics for
many years.
m Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

As important as the ideas was the devotion to implementing them and the
pragmatic approach to solving the seemingly insurmountable problems facing early Zionists. Unlike Borochov and other
ideologues who spent their lives publicizing their Zionist ideas abroad, Gordon came to Palestine, and though he was
already 47 years old when he arrived, he insisted on engaging in physical labor and enduring the rigors of life in the
early settlements.
m Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

Gordon wrote:

The Jewish people has been completely cut off from nature and imprisoned within city walls for two
thousand years. We have been accustomed to every form of life, except a life of labor- of labor done at our behalf and
for its own sake. It will require the greatest effort of will for such a people to become normal again. We lack the
principal ingredient for national life. We lack the habit of labor… for it is labor which binds a people to its soil and
to its national culture, which in its turn is an outgrowth of the people's toil and the people's labor.

Now it is true that every people have many individuals who shun physical labor and try to live off
the work of others… We Jews have developed an attitude of looking down on physical labor…. But labor is the only force
which binds man to the soil… it is the basic energy for the creation of national culture. This is what we do not have,
but we are not aware of missing it. We are a people without a country, without a national living language, without a
national culture. We seem to think that if we have no labor it does not matter - let Ivan, John or Mustafa do the work,
while we busy ourselves with producing a culture, with creating national values and with enthroning absolute justice in
the world. Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

...

In my dream I come to the land. And it is barren and desolate and given over to strangers;
destruction darkens its face and foreigners rule in corruption. And the land of my forefathers is distant and foreign to
me and I too am distant and foreign to it. And the only link that ties my soul to her the only reminder that I am her
son and she is my mother is that my soul is as desolate as hers. So I shake myself and with all my strength... I throw
the old life off. And I start everything from the beginning. And the first thing that opens up my heart to a life I have
not known before is labor. Not labor to make a living, not work as a deed of charity, but work for life itself... it is
one of the limbs of-life, one of its deepest roots. And I work....m Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

"There is a cosmic element in nationality which is its basic ingredient. That cosmic element may be
best described as the blending of the natural landscape of the Homeland with the spirit of the people inhabiting it.
This is the mainspring of a people's vitality and creativity, of its spiritual and cultural values. Any conglomeration
of individuals form a society in the mechanical sense, one that moves or acts, but only the presence of the cosmic
element makes for an organic national entity with creative vitality.m Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

I think that everyone of us ought to retreat for a moment into his innermost self, free himself from
all outside influences - both from those of the gentile world and even from the influence of our own Jewish past - and
then ask himself with the utmost simplicity, seriousness, and honesty: What, essentially, is the purpose of our national
movement? What do we expect to find in Palestine that no other place can give us? Why should we segregate ourselves from
the nations among whom we have lived our lives? Why leave the lands of our birth, which have fashioned our personalities
and so largely influenced our spirits? Why should we not share full and unreservedly with those nations in their great
work for the progress of mankind? In other words, why should we not completely assimilate ourselves among those nations?
What stops us?m Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

Surely it is not religion. In our day it is quite possible to live without any religion at all...the
answer is that there is a force within every one of us which is fighting for its own life - which seeks its own
realization…m Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

Jewish life in the Diaspora lacks this cosmic element of national identity; it is sustained by the
historic element alone, which keeps us alive and will not let us die, but it cannot provide us with a full national
life. What we have come to find only in Palestine is the cosmic element... We come to our Homeland in order to be
planted in our natural soil from which we have been uprooted, to strike our roots deep into its life-giving substance...m
Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

We, the Jews, were the first in history to say: "For all the nations shall go each in the name of its
God" and "Nations shall not lift up sword against nation" - and then we proceed to cease being a nation ourselves...
Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

As we now come to re-establish our path among the ways of living nations of the earth, we must make
sure that we find the right path. We must create a new people, a human people whose attitude toward other peoples is
informed with the sense of human brotherhood and whose attitude toward nature and all within it is inspired by noble
urges of life-loving creativity. All the forces of our history, all the pain that has accumulated in our national soul,
seem to impel us in that direction... we are engaged in a creative endeavor the like of which is itself not to be found
in the whole history of mankind: the rebirth and rehabilitation of a people that has been uprooted and scattered to the
winds...m Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

(A.D. Gordon, "Our Tasks Ahead" 1920)

Evolution of Socialist Zionism into Labor Zionism

Berl Katzenelson (also Katznelson, Katzanelson) was one of the pivotal
theorists of Socialist and Labor Zionism. Unlike Borochov, he was able to emigrate to Palestine and therefore his ideas
reflect Socialist Zionism in practice. The essence of Socialist Zionism, according to Katzenelson, was the realization
that Marxist analysis did not take into account the Jewish problem or offer a solution for it: This is consistent with
the writings of Borochov and early Zionist socialists. Borochov elaborated his ideology into a theory of how
nationalism, national development and local circumstances affect socialism. He had pointed out a weakness in the
internationalist doctrine of Marxism that became glaringly evident in World War I, when nationalist particularism
triumphed over "class solidarity" and most of the working class movements in each country supported the war,
particularly in Germany.

Katzenelson however, also lived beyond that era, and saw the crushing of
Zionism and Poalei Tziyon by the Bolsheviks, and the evils of Stalinist dictatorship. He wrote that the realization of
the failure of socialist doctrine to solve the Jewish question led to a wholly different formulation. According to him,
socialist Zionist theorists, said, in effect to the Bolsheviks, “If you cannot grasp our problem, this is a sign that
there are many other matters which have escaped you." This produced a radical revision of ideology, which rejected both
dogmatic Marxism and the dictates of what he called the "Paris Couturier." The ideas of Socialist and Labor
Zionism were always out of fashion in intellectual circles and never "politically correct. Thus, Katznelson wrote:

At that period, on the threshold of the twentieth
century, European Socialism conceived the existence of a placid, idyllic life, and its thinking - confident and
optimistic - was established by venerable “disciples" who pursued the ways that had been set for them. The Jewish
intellectual enthusiastically accepted everything put out by the apostles of Karl Kautsky and Georgi Plekhanov, in the
same way as the provincial city blindly follows the dictates of fashion. Somewhere in Paris, the arbiter of fashion
cuts, sews and controls the market. In intellectual life, too, many are bound to this "Paris Couturier" and those who do
not follow the intellectual fashion are regarded as being "queer", like somebody from another planet. In those days
Socialist Zionism undertook to work intensively. It was as if these ‘unruly’ impudent pupils, Syrkin, Zytlovsky,
Borochov, and their colleagues said to the dictators of Socialism: - “If you cannot grasp our problem, this is a sign
that there are many other matters which have escaped you." With assimilation -"emancipation in the Exile" - as a point
of departure, Socialist Zionist thinking was spurred on to a criticism of the values of actual Socialism. Opinions
prevailing on the interpretation of nationalism and the nationalist movements, the agrarian question, the small farmer,
cooperation, the migration of peoples, the settlement of lands, the poor grasp of what was exactly involved in the task
of the pioneering avant-garde Socialist worker, the lack of orientation towards the obligations of personal commitment -
all these issues, even then, engaged and perturbed Zionist Socialist thinking and forced it to charter its own course.

It is probably fair to say that Katzenelson
provided the ideological rationale for the transformation of Socialist Zionism into Labor Zionism.

Goals and Slogans of Labor Zionism and Reality

Labor Zionism, which embodied, even at that early date, the vanguard of
Palestinian Zionism, initially built its practical ideology around three "conquest" slogans which sounded very
militaristic: Conquest of Guard work (Kibbush Hashmira), Conquest of Labor (Kibbush Ha'avoda) and Conquest of the
(agricultural) Land - Kibbush Hakarkah. Many years later, Ben Gurion was to add a fourth, less successful slogan, "Kibbush
Hashmamah," Conquest of the Wilderness - referring to population of the Negev.

Conquest of quarding (Kibbush Hashmira) referred to taking over the task of
guarding Jewish settlements from Arab guards. The practical problem was that Arab guards did not always provide
security, either because they colluded with family and friends to allow pilfering, or because their own enemies attacked
settlements in order to embarrass them and take revenge. The ideological motive was self-sufficiency. For this task, the
Hashomer
group was organized. The carrying of weapons by Jews was controversial.

Conquest of the land (Kibbush Haqarqa) meant purchase, reclamation and
settlement of lands, and also variously, settlement of the land by workers in an initial phase and its reclamation. The
land purchases were done by the ICA and the Zionist organization. However, the land was often swampy, malaria infested
uninhabitable and unsuitable for agriculture. Clearing rocks, setting up houses and draining swamps was difficult work
carried out by the Halutzim (pioneers) of the second and third Aliya.

Conquest of Labor (Kibbush Ha'avoda) was central to both Poalei Tziyon and
Achdut Ha'avoda. Poalei Tziyon's party periodical carried the slogan, "The necessary condition for the realization
of Zionism is the conquest of all occupations in the country by Jewish Labor. In its ideological meaning, "conquest of
labor" referred to return of Jews to productive labor. While Jews could not be a normal nation without blacksmiths and
milkmen and tinsmiths and construction workers, the most urgent emphasis was placed on agricultural labor. In its
practical meaning, conquest of labor referred in particular to finding work places for inexperienced Jewish workers who
could not compete in the plantations sponsored by the Baron Rothschild. The specter of Jews becoming colonial landowners
and exploiters of natives was anathema to the labor movement. Clearly, it would never be possible to build a Jewish
proletariat and peasantry on this basis. As Ben Gurion told Musa Alami in 1934:

“We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South
Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work,
easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland” (David Ben-Gurion to Palestinian nationalist Musa Alami 1934), quoted in Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and
the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War, London: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 140).

The martial ring of these slogans is misleading, as no violence
was envisioned or intended by the people who used them.

The idea of the 'conquest of labour' was central to Hapoel
Hatzair policy.: it was imperative to increase the number of Jewish workers as much and as quickly as possible and to
improve their working and living conditions. It was absolutely essential, furthermore, for the new immigrants to gain a
firm foothold in agriculture. The parasitims of Jewish existence in the diaspora had shocked them into embracing Zionism
and they feared that any backsliding, any compromise in this respect, would fatally affect the future of the Jewish
national renaissance. Yet the 'conquest of labor as they interpreted it was not meant to harm anyone. It is difficult to
imagine men and women less warlike than A. D. Gordon, Yosef Aronowitz, Yosef Sprinzak and the other leaders of Hapoel
Hatzair. Unlike the Poale Zion, they refused to participate in the foundation of Hashomer, the defense organization,
because it smacked, however, faintly, of militarism. (Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism, New York, Schocken, 2003, p
285)

By accident or deliberately, the "conquest" slogans are today
often used out of context to argue that the Labor Zionist movement was trying to conquer the land by force and
dispossess Arabs. That was not the case. It seemed logical and fair, that if Arabs hired Arab watchmen, Jews would hire
Jewish watchmen, and if Arabs hired Arabs to pick oranges, Jews should hire Jews. Likewise, the task of subjugating the
mostly barren lands they had purchased seemed to be essential if the Jews were to create a successful community in
Palestine. As the lands that were "conquered" were often not cultivated and could not be cultivated without much
preparation, and the inhabitants received compensation that would enable them to purchase other land, there did not seem
to be any "actual dispossession."

The slogans were used by sides in different debates that took
place within the Zionist movement and took on new meanings. "Conquest of the land" was used by some of the early Degania
settlers to justify their idea that they would settle in to a newly purchased area, prepare it for agriculture and
remain there for a year to "conquer" it, and then move on, giving way to permanent settlers. In the early days,
"Conquest of Labor" referred exclusively to becoming agricultural workers in the plantations underwritten by the Baron
Rothschild, and conquest of the land referred to settlements run by workers. Thus, in a dispute with Joseph Vitkin (or
Witkin), Joseph Ahronowitz, who opposed the idea of independent workers' settlements, insisted that "conquest of labor"
was more important than "conquest of the land." (Laqueur,
A History of Zionism, New York, Schocken, 2003, p. 287).

Though by the 1930s there was a large and growing Jewish working
class in Palestine, there were still sizeable numbers of Arab workers in Jewish owned industries and especially in agriculture.
Overall, about 14% of the labor force employed in Jewish enterprises was Arab.
"Conquest of Labor" was an accomplished fact and not a real issue any more. However, the Arabs themselves accomplished
the segregation of Jewish industries in the 1930s. The general strike that was begun during the Arab Revolt
suddenly removed Arab labor from Jewish industries. Even when the strike ended, Arabs would not come back to work for
Jews in any reliable way, even when they were wanted. The polarization produced by the Arab revolt ended dramatically
reduced Arab participation in Jewish industries and agriculture, but it did not end it.

Labor Zionism and Workers' Settlements

Conditions in the time of the Turks were incredibly harsh, and the immigrants
found it difficult to adapt to them. The Arabs would not hire them. Industrial production did not exist. Jewish farmers
and plantation owners preferred Arab labor, as Arab workers were cheaper, experienced in agriculture and inured to the
hardships of hard work and the difficult climate. Therefore, beyond the fancy slogans, there developed an urgent
problem. The workers of the workers' movement had no work to conquer, and the Zionist movement had no trained "troops"
to "conquer" the land. Groups of workers were sent to farm land, under the supervision of an overseer. But the
workers often quarreled with the overseer, as at Kinneret. Eventually, an experiment was tried. At the request of the
workers, and in particular on the initiative of
Manya Shochat.
they were allowed to organize their own commune and take possession of land near Sejera, called Degania.
Though pioneers like
Manya Shochat and
others chose the kibbutz form of organization for ideological reasons, Kibbutz Degania, the first kibbutz, became a
model for settlement of Palestine, not because of ideological correctness, but because it worked. It provided a way for
the Zionist movement to settle young people on the land, and to ensure that the settlement would have continuity and
would not fall apart. This was true of the
kibbutz movement and of the Hashomer organization,
the organization of Jewish guards that prevented raids on Jewish settlements.
The spread of Labor Zionism and Labor ZIonist ideology was not confined to kibbutzim and self defense. It was
also true both of the general ideology of conquest
of labor and return to the soil, which became the mainstay of
Zionist aspirations in Palestine and of the specific, controversial project to exclude Arab workers from Jewish
plantations. (see also the larger discussion of conquest of labor and the Arab issue here).
Zion

A third innovation that enabled conquest of labor was the Moshav. The Moshav was the brainchild of Joseph Vitkin, who suggested in his 1913 essay, Conquest of the Land and
Conquest of Labor (here - in Hebrew) that workers should be
settled in cooperative villages that would provide them some support, rather than trying their luck as individuals. This
would, he argued, do away with the need for agronomists and overseers who were in short supply and whose interference
was resented. One after another, the workers' movements provided adaptive, pragmatic, creative solutions that made it
possible to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Each initiative began with the workers movement and was
eventually adopted by the entire Palestine Jewish community and then by the World Zionist movement. By the last years of Ottoman rule, Poalei Tziyon, Hapoel Hatzair and some
smaller socialist factions more or less dominated organized Zionist activity in Palestine, though they still did not
control the much larger Zionist movement abroad. In the coming years, they would leverage on these early beginnings to
form kibbutz-based underground defense forces, to found a labor union and a health insurance scheme, all of which would
ensure the centrality of the Labor Zionist movement to the Palestinian community and to Zionism.

Labor Zionism in practice: Kibbutz Degania, 1910.

The ideology of Labor Zionism became the
ideology of Zionism in Palestine and the organization of Labor Zionism became to a large extent increasingly identical
with the organization of Zionism in Palestine, simply because it worked. With time, Zionism in Palestine became, for all practical purposes identical with the Jewish
community in Palestine, and the projects of Labor Zionism became to a greater or lesser degree the projects of the
entire community, socialist or otherwise. ism Israel Isreal labor Zionist movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel different Zionism Zionist uto

David Ben-Gurion and Labor Zionism

David Ben-Gurion, though a member of Poalei Tziyon, was an admirer of
Gordon's philosophy, and as he lived in Palestine, he was more preoccupied with solving the practical problems of
Zionist settlement than with the socialist polemics and ideological shadings that characterized the writings of Ber
Borochov.

Beginning in the 1920s, David Ben-Gurion successfully merged the majority
factions of the different Labor Zionist and socialist groups to form Achdut Avoda and later the MAPAI (Mifleget Poalei Eretz Israel -
Party of the workers of the Land of Israel) party. Since then, the different factions of the labor-Zionist
movement split, recombined and re-split in complicated ways, over issues such as the bi-national state idea and support
or lack of it for the Soviet Union. However, the heart of the movement remained a moderate, non-Marxist and
non-doctrinaire labor party. Ben-Gurion and others created the larger Labor-Zionist
apparatus that was the nucleus of the unofficial and unrecognized Jewish state, operating through the Zionist executive
and the
Histadrut
labor union to provide education, health care, social services and the nucleus of a defense force.
At first, the Histadrut and kibbutz collective farms took the lead, as they were the local base of power.

The Kibbutzim, founded as a practical means of implementing Zionist settlement, became the backbone of the
Zionist "state in the making" and the recruiting grounds of the
Haganah and
Palmach
underground defense forces. As a
self-contained agricultural cooperative community, the kibbutz was well suited to developing and defending wilderness
areas, hiding arms caches from the British and training future leaders. The kibbutzim also received a great deal of
attention as social experiments. They remain the only large scale example of supposedly classless socialist syndicalist
communities, though the principles of kibbutz living have drifted away from the stringent early socialist ideals.
Another institution of "classical Zionism" created by the socialist Zionist movement was the
G'dud Ha'avodah,
the Labor Battalion, which settled kibbutzim, drained swamps and paved roads in the 1920s, helping to create the first
infrastructure of the Jewish national home. The G'dud Ha'avodah was controversial. It clashed with the goal of producing
a settled, regular proletariat and "peasantry." Ben Gurion opposed it because the nomadic nature of its activities
prevented land settlement.

Labor Zionism takes the lead in the Zionist Movement

Throughout the twenties however, the Zionist movement remained in the hands
of traditional, general Zionist leaders, not necessarily socialist, and was run from abroad. The Labor Zionist movement
sought to change this situation. Ben Gurion's leadership and philosophy were embodied in the slogan "From class to
nation," a title of an essay collection he published in the 1930s. On the one hand, this meant that as the international
proletariat would become the human race in the socialist vision, the Jewish proletariat of Palestine would become the
Jewish nation. On the other hand, it meant that Ben Gurion and the Labor Zionist movement would subordinate class
questions to the national struggle.

By 1935, Ben-Gurion had
moved from the Histadrut to the Jewish Agency. The workers of the Zionist Yishuv had taken over the leadership of the
Zionist movement from the philanthropists and community leaders of the European Jewish communities. Labor Zionism and
Socialist Zionism, through the kibbutzim and the resistance movements, and through control of the Zionist executive,
were now to play a crucial role in the struggle against the British, the struggle against Fascism, the diplomatic
maneuverings required to bring about the creation of a Jewish state, and the defense of that state. The heads of the
Labor Zionist movement - Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Sharrett and others came to represent Zionism to the Jews of the
Diaspora and to the world. They made every crucial decision on the road to statehood, and were in large part responsible
for every success and every failure.

Labor Zionism after the creation of the state of Israel

Labor Zionism played the central role in the creation of the state of Israel
and remained the backbone of the state during its initial period. The Haganah and the Palmach that had been the
underground armies of the Jewish community were absorbed into the IDF. The armies were dismantled, but the officers of
the IDF were the same people who had been officers in the Haganah and the Palmach. The Histadrut Labor Union and its
enterprises literally built most of Israel especially in the earlier years. The imprint of the Histadrut construction
company, Solel Boneh was proudly borne on every project from new immigrant towns in Dimona to churches in Nazereth.
In particular, the Kibbutz movement played a key role in defense of the country in the Israeli War of Independence in
1948 and thereafter, in industry and in politics. Though the kibbutz’s primary task was settlement, in the 1950s a
quarter of the Knesset members from the parties of the Labor movement were kibbutz members. Numerous politicians and
military leaders were scions of the Kibbutz movement including Moshe Dayan. Of Israel’s eight prime ministers, four had
been kibbutz members, including Ehud Barak. A quarter of the officer corps of the IDF in 1967 were Kibbutz members,
though the population of the kibbutzim never exceeded 5% of the population of Israel. In 1967, Kibbutzim were still
producing a quarter of the industrial output of Israel.

However, the Labor Zionist movement, which created a state and a revolution
in the Jewish people, failed to adapt to changing conditions, even though some of those changes were its own doing.
While the dissolution of the Haganah and Palmach were an inevitable result of the formation of the state, the
dissolution of the Labor Amal education was not, especially since a national religious education system was allowed to
exist alongside the secular education system, and the ultraorthodox Jews were allowed to have their own schools. Without
an educational network, a major tool to prepare the future cadres of labor Zionism was lost. As Israeli society became
increasingly affluent, and as Zionism lost the urgency of its early years, the simple joys and ideological dedication of
the the youth scouting movements such as Hashomer Hatzair lost their appeal as well.

In a democratic country, no founding party stays in power indefinitely. It
was perhaps inevitable that Labor Zionism should lose the reins of government in 1977, and that the once magnificent
institutions it had built to support the birth of the state should fall into disrepair.

Critics of Labor Zionism point to its faulty social outlook and its decaying
institutions as the reasons for its downfall. However an equally important factor was the change in Israeli society that
swept the country country after the Six day war. When
it became apparent that a confrontation with Arab nationalism was inevitable, Socialist Zionists and Labor Zionists had
split into a diversity of camps. Some groups insisted on working for coexistence in a single state as a matter of
principle. Some groups, notably the Mapam party, advocated a binational state. The Labor party (Mapai), which
represented the center, ultimately backed partition and a Jewish state, while some elements of the "Labor Zionist"
movement advocated "voluntary" transfer of Arabs out of Palestine and even more extreme positions. However,
the majority of the Labor Zionist movement, the mainstream of Labor Zionism, were committed to a pragmatic approach to
coexistence with Israel's Arab neighbors. The Israel that Labor Zionism created won the Six Day War. The heroes of the
Six Day War were all scions of Labor Zionism, and many of the generals were born on kibbutzim. The new reality of the
occupation however, created a split in Israeli society.

Labor Zionism and the Yom Kippur war

The inclusion of right-wing leader
Menachem Begin in the government during the
Six Day War legitimized
Zionist Revisionism, hitherto anathematized as reactionaries and terrorists. The victory brought to the fore currents of messianic Judaism and raised the political fortunes of those intent on
conquering and holding the occupied territories. The settlement movement and its religious-nationalistic philosophy were
not compatible with the secular universalist message and platform of Labor Zionism. The Labor party was split on this issue, and was not forward in
settling the newly conquered areas. Many Labor Zionist leaders voiced principled opposition to the settlement program.
A few, such as Ariel Sharon, broke with the Labor party.

The surprise and trauma of the Yom Kippur War
discredited Labor party leadership and paved the way for the downfall of the Labor government. It is questionable whether the philosophy and government that replaced Labor Zionism in Israel was better for working class
interests and for Zionism.
To a great extent, in the past two decades, the political fortunes of Labor Zionism in Israel have been linked to the
peace process with the Palestinians. As the peace process has not gone well, the fortunes of Labor Zionism have
suffered. The Likud government that replaced the Labor party speeded the decline of Labor institutions like the
Histadrut and the Kibbutz, which had been the backbone of the Labor Zionist "state within a state" and embodied the hope
of moving from a class to a nation. The percentage of Kibbutz members in Israeli society declined, and the leadership of
Kibbutz members in the army and government was replaced by members of the religious settlers movement and others.

Factors in the Decline of Labor Zionism

The decline of Labor Zionism in Israel may be attributed to a number of
factors.

As noted, the Yom Kippur war discredited the labor Zionist leadership and
allowed the opposition to take power, but the "mahapach" (upset - a term coined by Israeli newscaster Hayyim Yavin on
the evening of the elections in 1977 that brought about the downfall of labor) reflected deep social ferment in Israel.
The leadership and cadres of the Labor party were mostly European Jews, nurtured on Eastern European socialist ideals.
As "founding fathers" they rapidly found themselves in the upper and middle classes of the successful state they had
created. The Jewish proletariat that replaced them in large numbers came from Jewish immigrants forced to flee Arab and
Muslim lands. To them, the secular and socialist ideology of the Europeans was anathema. The were largely excluded, and
excluded themselves from the labor parties and the kibbutzim. Many found that they were employees of these labor
Zionists in kibbutzim and Histadrut factories. The next great wave of immigration came from the former USSR. These
newcomers as well were not, for obvious reasons, particularly enamored of socialist ideology and life in the "Kolkhoz"
collective farm. As the labor party members became entrenched in leadership positions in industry and academia, they
moved further and further away from social concerns and ceased, effectively, to represent the workers. The Israeli
right, paradoxically, was able to use the disenchantment of new immigrants with the establishment to recruit them to its
own ranks.

The Kibbutzim failed, for the most part, to project their ideals on Israeli society at
large, and were viewed as an elite that was contemptuous of workers rather than supporting them. This view was aided and
abetted actively by propaganda of "liberal" and right-wing political parties. These ignored the fact that
Kibbutzim
shouldered a disproportionate share of the defense burden, as well as producing a disproportionate percentage of Israeli
industrial output. In 1967, with much less than 5% of Israeli population, Kibbutzim accounted for about a quarter of
Israeli industrial output and about a quarter of the officers of the IDF. Nonetheless, right-wing parties insisted that
tax laws and subsidies were giving Kibbutzim a free ride. In fact, similar subsidies were given to all agricultural
enterprises, and when policies were changed, Israeli agriculture suffered severe set backs across the board.

The Zionist movement and in particular the Labor Zionist movement, had
expended great effort on conversion of Jews to farming and "productive" industrial labor - that is, work in factories -
"conquest of labor" and "conquest of the land." However, Israel was too small to support large scale industrial
resources and too poor in resources and manpower to be competitive in the world market. Steel, coal, oil and other goods
had to be imported. Large scale industries were impractical. A machine used for the manufacture of lipstick tubes in
another country could be run for a single day in Israel and produce a supply sufficient for an entire year. To protect
Israeli industry from foreign competition, the labor governments had adopted numerous artificial currency support
measures, subsidies and tariffs. Critics claimed these lowered the standard of living and stifled the economy. While
Jews were busy returning to the land, farmers all over the world were busy fleeing the farms to the cities. When Zionism
began, more than 80% of the population of typical countries were farmers. By the end of the twentieth century less than
10% of the population of developed countries engaged in farming. Manual labor was being replaced by robots in advanced
countries, and was being outsourced to poorer countries. Instead of the Jews becoming like the proletarians of 19th
century Germany, Britain and the United States, increasingly, the populations of the leading countries were adopting the
sort of professional, skilled occupations that been the mainstays of Western European Jews. The most profitable
industries in Israel and elsewhere turned out to be hi-tech communications and software concerns, where skills and
ingenuity mattered more than manpower. Increasingly, the new "proletarians" have degrees in electrical engineering,
chemistry and bioinformatics.

"Conquest of labor" did not create a classical 19th century Marxist
class-conscious Jewish proletariat, as existed at the time in European countries. but this would have been pointless.
The economy based on workers and peasants is fast vanishing from all post-industrial societies. Improbable as it seemed
at the time, "conquest of labor" did produce Jewish farmers, truck drivers, and auto-mechanics and Jews who worked in
every other regular industrial trade, in a nation with Jewish-owned industries. To that extent, the "normalization" of
the Jewish people was accomplished. However, while the Jewish people had begun to return to the land and to work in
heavy industry, the rest of the world moved in the opposite direction. In industrial countries, only a tiny proportion
of the populace makes a living from agriculture, and in post-industrial economies, services and information industries
predominate over the hammer and anvil factories of classical Marxist economies. The Israeli economy moved with the
world, especially since agriculture could never be fully competitive in a land with scarce water and arable land
resources. Since Israel had to be a working model of a modern state rather than a blueprint of a 19th century
industrial economy, economic facts rendered many facets of the old ideologies obsolete. The old slogans and the old
ideologies were irrelevant, but nothing was offered to replace them. Zion

Likewise, it became increasingly difficult to keep people on Kibbutzim.
Economic difficulties caused by the policies of an unfriendly government, the lure of the surrounding affluent society,
the decline of Israeli agriculture and disillusion with socialism all play a role in the increasing trend to
privatization on Kibbutzim and to their dissolution.

A major failure of Labor Zionism was that in its disgust with the occupation,
a large portion of the potential ideological leadership of the movement abrogated the central national leadership role
that Ben Gurion and his followers had built over the years. The right called themselves themselves the "National Camp"
and the left meekly acquiesced and allowed itself to be labeled "peace camp." By taking the role of opposition and
focusing on the issue of settlements, the Israeli left and the left wing of the labor movement, disqualified itself from
national leadership, because it did not offer a coherent alternative national vision. The result was the opposite of
what was intended. In the absence of a real alternative, Zionism was redefined by religious Zionists and their
non-Zionist supporters and right wing secular allies to be preoccupation with settlement in the West Bank and Gaza, and
these settlers were crowned as the "new pioneers."

Another important factor was that the Soviet Union, throughout most of its
existence, was opposed to Zionism. Members of Poalei Tziyon who returned to Soviet Russia perished in Stalin's camps. In
the 60s, the Soviets launched an anti-Semitic "Zionology" campaign, and supported the Arab enemies of the Jewish state
consistently. Trotskyites were anti-Zionist with equal vehemence. This did not make socialist ideas popular among the
Zionist Jews of Palestine and Israel. Finally, the USSR collapsed, leaving those factions of the Labor and Socialist
Zionist movements that had supported the USSR, and some of whom had in fact been doctrinaire Stalinists, deeply
embarrassed. Leftist movements became increasingly antagonistic to Zionism, and this did not make progressive politics
more popular in Israel.

Nonetheless, the Labor-Zionist movement continued to play an important role as the conscience of
Israel. During the 1982 "Peace for the Galilee" war in Lebanon, Labor Zionism was instrumental in organizing the big
demonstration against the war and the massacre in Sabra and Shatila. The Labor party returned to power in 1992 to initiate the
Oslo peace process and again in 1999, under Ehud Barak, Labor governments tried to advance the peace process. However,
it is debatable whether the technocratic outlook of those governments was really consistent with Labor Zionist ideology.

The Kibbutz movement is still active in social causes. Kibbutzim organized relief for Turkish earthquake victims, and homes for Muslim refugees from Kosovo
and refugees from Arab persecution in Darfur. Kibbutz members aided Palestinians in the harvest and tried to protect
them from settlers who were destroying their trees and crops.

Many of the problematic issues, and the situation of the Labor Zionist
movement, were illustrated in the life and writings of Yitzhak Ben-Aharon. Ben Aharon
had warned in 1963 that Labor Zionism needed to unite and reform or face oblivion. His
call went largely unheeded. After the Six day war he insisted that the occupation of the West Bank was wrong and called
for unilateral Israeli withdrawal. He earned the ire of Labor party politicians by pointing out that the government as
an employer was exploiting workers in the same way as management. Labor party leaders did their best to ignore Ben
Aharon's critique and to treat him as an honored but outdated elder of the party.
When he died in 2006, it was evident to many that the downfall of Labor Zionism
was due in part to the problems that Ben Aharon had pointed out.

Labor Zionism and leftist anti-Zionism

Another factor that has worked against
Labor Zionism in recent years has been the increasingly virulent anti-Zionism of international "left" movements.
Traditional Marxist opposition to Zionism has been joined by anger at the occupation, which became identified with
Zionism in the minds of many. Conversely, the "left" has become identified in the minds of many as "enemies of Israel."
Thus, in Israel and among many Zionists abroad, it is difficult to gain acceptance for progressive Zionist ideology and
programs. Labor Zionism thus finds itself somewhat isolated both from mainstream Zionism and from the international
labor movement.

Within Israel, disgust with the occupation produced the so-called Post
Zionist movement, which sought to discredit Zionism and did not spare the Labor Zionist movement as well. The slogans of
"conquest of labor" and "conquest of the land" were portrayed by Post-Zionists as if they were intended to be taken
literally, and quotes that arose out of various disputes within the Labor Zionist movement, in an entirely different
context are used selectively to discredit Labor Zionism as a form of reactionary colonialism. For example, Ze'ev
Sternhell (The founding myths of Israel, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.) quotes Ben Gurion as saying in
1922:

[...] The possibility of conquering the land is liable to slip out of our
grasp. Our central problem is immigration ... and not adapting our lives to this or that doctrine. [...] We are
conquerers of the land facing an iron wall, and we have to break through it. [...] How can we run our Zionist movement
in such a way that [... we] will be able to carry out the conquest of the land by the Jewish worker, and which will find
the resources to organise the massive immigration and settlement of workers through their own capabilities? The creation
of a new Zionist movement, a Zionist movement of workers, is the first prerequisite for the fulfillment of Zionism.
[...] Without [such] a new Zionist movement that is entirely at our disposal, there is no future or hope for our
activities.

Socialists may view the above quote as a "sell-out" of socialism to
nationalism, and anti-Zionists may view it as foretelling the expulsion of the Arabs of Palestine. Neither view is
quite justified. It is easy to read back the events of five decades later into the speech of 1922, but it is not
accurate. Labor Zionist policy in 1922 reflected the ideas of a tiny band of people living in a land that did not belong
to them, under foreign rule, and who constituted a minority faction in a national movement that was itself struggling
for existence, in a tiny and impoverished country. Ben Gurion of 1922 did not command any armies with which to "conquer"
anyone and did not decide the course of Zionism, which was determined in Berlin and Paris and London by magnates and
traditional leaders. The Labor Zionist movement of 1922 could not foresee the Arab revolt, the Holocaust, Stalinism, the
foundation of the Jewish state, the series of wars that followed or the failure of socialism in the USSR. The subsequent
history and policies of the Labor Zionist movement were the result of the immense world-wide cataclysms of the twentieth
century in which tens of millions of people perished, empires rose and fell and a third of the Jewish people were wiped
out. Ben Gurion may have been far-seeing, but he could no more foresee all these changes then he could have predicted
the invention of atom bombs or computers in 1922.

"Conquest of the land" conjures up militaristic images. As we have seen, this
slogan did not have an aggressive intent, and the idea was certainly far from the minds of Ben Gurion and his listeners
in 1922. The key phrase in this speech is "The creation of a new Zionist movement, a Zionist movement of workers,
is the first prerequisite for the fulfillment of Zionism." The problem that Ben Gurion saw, was how to realize the dream
of Borochov and others, to accomplish the Zionist revolution from below, by the agency of a Jewish proletariat that was
then virtually non-existent. With no workers, there could be no real workers movement, and with no Jewish country, there
was no point to a national Jewish workers movement. In 1922, the Zionist movement had realized an important goal, the creation of the British
Mandate which was to foster Jewish immigration. But the Jewish immigrants were noticeably absent. Likewise, the Jewish
financiers and philanthropists who were to have aided the movement were reluctant to invest in Palestine. The idea that
a movement of Jewish workers would "settle the land through their own capabilities" was the alternative that Ben-Gurion
proposed, and it was the only reasonable alternative. The alternative proposed by Marxists was that Jews should simply
stay in their own countries and fight for equality within their local socialist movements. Large numbers of Jewish
socialists made this choice. Many of them were executed by the Stalinist regime in the USSR, others perished in the
Holocaust. It was simply not a practical alternative.

Orthodox Marxists have criticized socialist Zionism for failing to implement
"true socialism." The socialist ideal could not coexist with nationalism they argued. However, in every state
in which it was implemented, especially in the former USSR, Socialism was subordinated to nationalism. In fact, "true socialism" has not been implemented by any socialist movement in any country.
Every "socialist state" created on the Leninist model has in fact been a nightmare for its people. To put it another
way, every Marxist critique of socialist Zionism must be judged in the light of history. At the beginning of the
twentieth century there was a huge world socialist movement that promised to change the world. Next to it, about 1905,
there sprang up a tiny Jewish Socialist Zionist movement in Russia, a handful of people with an impossible and quixotic
idea. The huge socialist movements of Europe and Russia are transformed into social democratic parties. The Russian
revolution was a miserable failure. It devoured many of the revolutionaries who created it, including and especially the
Jews. The German socialist movement consulted nationalist aims first in 1914, just as Ber Borochov had predicted.
International workers solidarity collapsed. The German socialist and communist met disaster after disaster after World
War I. They failed to unite, and instead the communists voted the fascists into power, and were eventually betrayed by
Stalin. Those who did not die in Dachau and other Nazi camps and prisons, were murdered by Stalin in Lubyanka prison and
in Siberia. The
minuscule Socialist Zionist movement, that began as an absurd collection of 150 penniless dreamers divided into two
rival factions, overcame huge odds to create a state and transform a people. Its creation is
imperfect, and it barely survived to the twenty-first century, but it did survive, and it succeeded in its major
missions. Marxist criticism of Socialist Zionism must be viewed in this light.

In 2005, Israeli politics were
revolutionized by the election of Histadrut labor leader Amir
Peretz to head the Israel Labor Party. Peretz' s self-propelled and
improbable rise from a high-school education and local politics in tiny Sderot to national leadership seemed like it
might end the
stagnation of the Labor party, which had faltered and gradually declined since the 1960s. Peretz found a genuine issue
in increasing social polarization wrought by draconian free-market economics of the right wing Likud governments. The
paradoxical behavior of the Israeli working class in supporting right-wing economics may slowly be coming to an end.
Peretz's rise certainly broke the
monopoly on party power that had been the privilege of the European elite and former IDF generals. Peretz vowed to win
back support of the Israeli working class for the party.

Unfortunately, Peretz has thus far proved to be a spectacular
failure. He did not advance any of the social programs he had advocated. Instead, he took the defense portfolio for
which he lacked experience and credentials. The failure of the Second Lebanon
War was blamed in part on his errors, and he was
retired to the back benches of the Israel Labor party. movement middle east socialist
Zionism Marxist Zionism Kibbutz Zion Labor Israel